The San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association (SPUR) produced a report entitled “Prologue to Action” arguing that, to enable the city to compete effectively, city government should influence growth so that San Francisco’s population “will move closer to ‘standard white Anglo-Saxon Protestant’ characteristics.” (Hirten, Farrell, and Weese 1966)

It’s, as always, the prospect of a “provincial” SF versus a world-class SF. What SPUR wants is to take tax and fee payer money and give it to … SPUR, so it then can advocate spending more tax and fee payer money on whatever flavor of the month development program its members stand to make money from. Why does SFGov give any money at all to SPUR?

What’s actually changed at SPUR the past four decades, aside from them saying that the UR in SPUR no longer stands for “Urban Renewal?”

“There is a privilege to being white in this country. I’m not saying that if you’re white, you have a lot of power as an individual. But if you’re white, you might be more likely to find* a white President,** a white Senator, a white police chief. I mean I’m just saying, right?”

Have you been to college? This is exactly what it’s like.

I mean I’m just saying, right?

*No comprendo. Do not copy. Repeat transmission, Good Buddy. So if “you” aren’t white, then you’re less likely to find a white…

you might even find this even more strange, actually…but that’s still not the whole thing…the whole thing is 55 minutes long and it was a meeting at one of randy Shaws hotels, the hartland…in fact, it appears there’s quite a bit of questionable stuff in there, especially about the corrupt twitterloin tax break

notice how one of Randy Shaws clients specifically says that it’s ‘unfair to put people that are just homeless into a hotel like that full of heroin addicts, meth addicts and crackheads’ and how THC staff and Jane Kim completely sidesteps the question and takes it to another context:

But couldn’t Rec and Park have put this matter to a vote, maybe online using that social media and whatnot? A penniless blogger could throw up a voting system in about five minutes – can’t Rec and Park do the same? This isn’t a matter of health or safety, right? So it seems appropriate that the Gilligans, Professors and the Mary Anns should have a say as well. Why do we seem to only listen to the Howells?

Oh well.

For 2009 anyway, enjoy your boring, WASPy-white, star-free Christmas Tree, San Francisco. But don’t give up Hope for Change (is that a “traditional” train ’round the tree R&P?) next year.